Sexing Up the Boy Bands

JC walked him to the door. Suddenly Justin grabbed him and pressed his lips against JC's. JC gasped in surprise and Justin slipped his tongue inside JC's warm mouth. JC kissed him back for a mere second and than pushed him away.

'Justin, no!' JC touched his lips. 'You can't kiss me. I'm with Ryan.'

Justin stared at the floor. 'I'm sorry.' He looked up with tear filled eyes. 'Don't be mad.'

JC reached out and hugged him. 'I'm not mad.'

Justin flashed a tiny smile. 'Thanks.'

Wait a minute! How did Justin, JC and Ryan -- three members of the boy band N'Sync -- become enmeshed in a gay love triangle? Are we reading the pilot of some new reality show? Or a crossover issue of Teen People and Men Who Love Men?

Not quite. The episode above is the creative fantasy of "zero," a writer in a growing online community that lets tens of thousands of mostly young people put a new spin on an old concept -- fan fiction.

Since the 1960s, sci-fi and fantasy readers have been creating fan fiction, taking characters from television and movies and writing them into their own stories. With the advent of the Internet, fan fiction and its sexually charged sub-genre, "slash" literature, skyrocketed into wide popularity. The most well known works of slash chronicle the sexual dramas of some our favorite sci-fi characters: the escapades of Kirk and Spock, the love affair of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, the secret tryst of Skinner and Krycek (also known as Kirk/Spock, Luke/Han or Skinner/Krycek -- hence the genre's name.)

The fan fiction universe has grown to include many sub-genres and unusual concoctions that original fan fiction enthusiasts could never have imagined. The newest of the sub-genres is music group slash -- "band fiction," if you will. Too impatient to wait for the next installment of VH-1's Behind the Music, fans have taken to re-inventing their music icon's personal lives. And in doing so, band fiction writers have stirred up a divisive controversy in the fan fiction community.

The content of band fiction varies greatly. There are stories of band member conflicts, chance meetings with fans, songwriting meetings, family relationships of the bands, record biz goings-on and much more. Quality, too, is inconsistent; for every readable, engaging story, there might be ten other pieces of schlock. Sifting the wheat from the chaff can be a chore.

Several web sites serve as repositories for band fiction. The most impressive of these is FanFiction.net. Their "Music Groups" section indexes stories for around 150 bands, totaling nearly 20,000 writings.

Xing Li, the creator of FanFiction.net, says there is a simple reason why band fiction is so popular. "I believe people write music group fiction simply because they are big fans of these groups."

But for the creators themselves, it's more than just that. It's a way to connect with their heroes -- albeit in an often sadistic way.

"There [is] always this overwhelming desire to strip our heroes' feelings bare, to lay it all open for us to see," says slash writer Allaire Mikháil, "to see them hurting, crying, sobbing, clinging to each other for support; to see them break down and show their emotions to the world, cracking the tough facade, stop the teasing, the banter, the macho behavior, and bring out the agony."

Another writer, identifying herself only as Stacy, relishes the fantasy life that slash brings her. "Slash forces you to open your mind, and really think about what these people would be going through in such a life altering experience. And as someone who's never had the experience, it's all the more profound."

But band fiction represents a significant change in the fan fiction universe, because instead of creating fantasies around fantastical characters, band fiction features characters who actually exist. Many feel that Real People Slash (RPS) is creepy at best, and unethical at worst. When made-up stories about real celebrities -- in a way, rumors posing as literature -- are passed to thousands upon thousands of readers via the Web, that creepiness is multiplied.